" Transference means several things. The first meaning is simply the strength of the relationship between therapist and patient. Or it can be, as Freud suggested, something more complicated, such as a redirection of feelings we’ve unconsciously retained from childhood. The patient may transfer his feelings for a parent or other authority figure onto the therapist. For instance, when I called Danny “handsome,” he transferred his childhood feelings of anger toward the abusive priest in his residential school, who’d also called him handsome, onto me. "

― Catherine Gildiner , Good Morning, Monster: A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery